Simple Comfort
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: When Annie breaks during her Victory Tour, Finnick comforts her by reading to her from her favorite book. (Quotes are from The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Why? Because that's Annie's favorite book, of course. A classic of Panem mythology.)


Annie ran from the stage. She didn't scream or cry. Surrounded by darkness that soaked her hair and her clothes to drag her under, that seeped into her skin, insinuated itself into her mouth and nose to choke off breath, into her ears and eyes to block sound and sight, she ran.

"…don't remember me. Really. It's not a paranoid thing…"

His voice penetrated the darkness, a living thing full of warmth and light. It sliced through the panic and fear, bringing with it brushstrokes of color to push back that absence of light. A swirl of green… A swath of gold-touched blue… His voice surrounded her, replacing the cold and the gray with heat and with life.

"…this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much…"

Waves of calm began to replace waves of chaos as he – she knew that voice, knew inside her very bones the man who owned it – continued to speak. He paused to take a breath and Annie gasped, huddled in further on herself when his voice broke as he began again. He was in pain. Something had hurt him.

No, not _him_. Something had hurt _Finnick_. He was Finnick and he wasn't speaking, he was reading. It was from her favorite book, an ancient text that had slipped beyond a simple tale into myth. She had told him about it late one night, when neither of them could sleep and he'd laughed, told her that it was one of his favorites, too, and then he'd jumped up from where he sat on the couch and run into his room.

When he came back, he held a copy of it in his hand and he sat back down, his back to the arm of the couch, facing her. The pages of his book were worn, smudged where his fingers left their mark, its edges softened and corners rounded, the cover cracked from years of use. But the spine was still solid, not broken from being opened too far.

"…a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability."

Annie swallowed when Finnick fell silent. She held her breath, but he didn't say anything more, so instead of listening to his voice, she listened to the sound of his breathing. The rhythm of it took up residence inside her; she breathed in tandem with him. In. Out. In. Out. She felt the carpet scratch against her cheek, heard the faint susurrus as he turned page after page, searching for something.

She remembered that he had read to her from that same book when she was in a Capitol hospital, hiding inside herself from the doctors and the needles, from the things she'd done in the arena, the things she'd seen. She scrunched her eyes closed so hard she saw lightning behind her lids, dug her nails into the nap of the carpet until they bent backward too far and it began to hurt. Finnick pulled in a ragged breath and his voice shook when he whispered her name. And that's when she began to cry. it wasn't some thing that had hurt him, it was her.

He closed the book and laid it on the floor; she couldn't see it past her closed lids, but she heard it. She heard him slide a little way closer to her on the floor, until he was close enough to stroke her hair. It wasn't the first time he'd read to her, and sometimes it was she who read to him. The book was a source of comfort to them both.

"Where are we?" she asked. Her voice sounded terribly small; he couldn't possibly have heard her.

"We're in the Justice Building in District Ten." All those faces, looking up at her from the crowd below the stage. The boy whose features and coloring looked nearly identical to the girl who'd tried to drown Annie in the arena, but who Annie had drowned instead. She shuddered under Finnick's hand and he stopped stroking her hair, slid his warm hand under it to rest against the little knob where her neck and spine met. "We're on your Victory Tour, Annie."

He sounded so careful, as though she might break, and Annie laughed as fresh tears welled behind her lids. She was already broken, after all, had been for months, no matter how much Finnick denied it. Wasn't she? She opened her eyes, saw nothing but cream-colored carpet and Finnick's blue silk-covered knee.

Not wanting to lose the simple comfort of his palm against her skin, still Annie struggled to sit up and Finnick helped her. He didn't stop touching her when she was sitting, instead pulling her in beside him, his arm around her shoulders, and she relaxed into him as they both leaned back against a wall. She stared at the broken spine of the book. It was her copy, not his.

"Do you want me to read more?" he asked. Instead of stroking her hair, he had wrapped a bit of it around his finger. Annie smiled.

"No, thank you. I'm okay now." _At least, for now_, she thought. She looked up at Finnick then and he grinned down at her, although she saw the fear that lingered behind his eyes.

"As you wish," he told her. He lifted her hand to brush her knuckles with a kiss and Annie's heart tripped in her chest as she looked quickly away, not wanting him to see everything she felt for him lingering behind her own eyes.


End file.
